By Clint Thompson
Frigid temperatures and unexpected snow last week in the Southeast impacted specialty crops. Strawberry producers in Alabama, Florida and Georgia felt the sting of the winter storm. That included Alabama farmer Todd Cassenbaum.
He resides in Lillian, Alabama, located just across from Pensacola, Florida, where historic snow amounts were recorded. Eight inches of snow fell on his strawberry plants, which are a little more than a month away from being harvested.
“The last time I remember snow of any amount was a couple of inches in 1973. The record they say is 1895, where I think they had three inches here in Pensacola, Florida, and we busted that out of the water,” he said. “I never would have expected that. They were saying up to four inches and I thought maybe an inch or two or something like that. But when it started it never stopped.
“We were getting about an inch an hour which is considered a pretty heavy snowfall.”
The initial assessment was not a favorable one for Cassenbaum’s plants. It killed blooms and made most of the berries mushy. However, the main concern is with the crowns of the plants and making sure they weren’t damaged. Cassenbaum said they won’t know that for a few days.
That’s an unfortunate development for a producer that was forced to order additional plants this year due to the Neopestalotiopsis disease.
“The last five years that we’ve grown them, we’ve had issues with Neopestalotiopsis. We had troubles every year and again this year. We planted 35,000 plants (this year) and ordered another 18,000 to replant because they were dying off on us,” Cassenbaum said. “They were actually prettier than the whole four or five years that I have been into berries.”